Designing Online Learning Environment with Faculty --Qian Li

Technology in Teacher Education

Since 1990, the number of computers in education has increased dramatically (Ely, 1995). However, computers have been used very limited among school teachers. Cuban (1998) stated that computers are limited to a small band of serious users, a slightly larger group of casual ones, and the majority is non-users at school. The gap between this high-tech schools and low-tech teaching implies the strong need for teacher professional development concerning integrating computers into class instruction.

Teachers teach the way they were taught (Fulton, 1989). Consequently, faculty members in the teacher education program are assumed the responsibility of modeling appropriate uses of technology as an instructional tool for students (Handler & Marshall, 1992). However, many education faculty members feel incompetent and not fully prepared to infuse technology in their teaching and student learning. They express their needs for computer training and technical support. As Schmidt (1995) pointed out, before technology use and integration throughout preparation programs can be realized, teacher education faculty must receive substantial amounts of training and support in using technologies.

Providing technology training is a complex and time-consuming task. Teacher education faculty need more continuous follow-up sessions than one-shot workshops to learn how to use technology, they need to understand how technology can improve their teaching and student learning as well (Smith & O'Bannon, 1999). Compared with workshops and other training sessions, one-on-one mentors for faculty seems to be one promising approach to helping faculty effectively use the time to learn about technologies. It becomes a theme that frequently emerged from the preservice teacher education literature on existing technology model (Mac Arthur, 1993; Thompson, Schmidt, & Hadjiyianni, 1995).

This case describes how a teacher education faculty went through process in designing an online learning environment with the assistance from a student mentor. The faculty member learned WebCT and designed a supplementary course site for her class. During the mentoring, learning technical skills were not presented as a big challenge for the faculty member with certain level of computer literacy. One of the most challenging dilemmas of this kind of using technology is to adjust to online teaching and learning. The faculty members desire to understand strength and weakness of different media and how they can best use technology to enrich and enhance their instruction. They need to recognize the role of technology is to enhance teaching, not to use technology for the sake of technology. As described in this case, one-on-one mentoring provides individualized assistance to faculty members and makes technology learning and integration meaningful for them.

Faculty Profile

Dr. Miller is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She is also the director of K-12 Foreign Languages Center. Dr. Miller is familiar with distance education because she is teaching courses in the ICN. She has been interested in using technology to improve class communication.
She is teaching an undergraduate course CI 468 (Methods in Foreign Language Instruction: Elementary School) to preservice teachers both on-campus and off-campus. The course has been taught traditionally in classroom. Some off-campus students used the snail mails and fax to learn the course.

Dr. Miller is an intermediate computer user. She appears confident and comfortable in using computers. She is experienced in handling emails via Eudora, searching on Internet, organizing and managing documents, using MS Word processing, create simple PowerPoint presentations, recording students' grades on computer, and using Webct 1.3 to facilitate her classroom teaching. Dr. Miller has a positive attitude towards technology. She often expresses her enthusiasm about technology integration into her courses.
The mentoring objective for Dr. Miller is to be familiar with WebCT 3.0 and build a course site to assist her teaching of CI 468. Dr. Miller wanted to design a WebCT site to facilitate her class discussion and also enable an easy and quick access to course information.

Student Mentor Profile

I am in the second year of my master program of instructional technology. Prior to joining the master program, I earned a B.A in English in China and had been teaching English as a second language to college students at one university in China. In 1999, I came to states and joined in the program of educational technology. My motivation and interest in this field stemmed from my belief in that the technology can improve productivity and effectiveness to teaching and learning. I have some technology experience. I have used computer software programs such MS office, Dreamweaver, Claris Homepage, Webct, Adobe Photoshop, and Director, etc. I also learned instructional design principles and theories during my program study.

I am glad to join the mentoring program and signed up ci610 when I heard it is available this semester. I believe the mentoring experience will enable me to work closely enough with a faculty to see how a subject matter expert designs his/her course and how instructional technology can fit in. On the other side, the mentoring experience will push me to refine and deepen my computer skills when accomplishing mentoring tasks.

Learning about WebCT 3.0

In our first mentoring meeting, Dr. Miller and I clarified mentoring goals. We would focus on learning WebCT 3.0 and building an online platform for her students to access class information and course discussion. We set up every Monday 2-3 for our mentoring meeting and laid out working agenda for the entire semester.

Since Dr. Miller and I have used Webct 1.3, we didn't feel anxious to learn new version of WebCT at first. We had thought that learning new version was going to be a smooth update of skills. However, we were wrong. After we looked at the new WebCT, we were troubled by a big change of screen interface. We couldn't apply much what we had known about old WebCT to the new one. Old familiar terms of old WebCT had been changed. I was not able to give a clear guidance without learning and trying by myself first. Dr. Miller seemed uncomfortable about the new WebCT too, because she couldn't find the buttons and areas to perform her familiar tasks such as adding students to courses and uploading/downloading files. Fortunately, our positive attitude saved us. We encouraged each other and decided to learn the WebCT from basics. Dr. Miller. said that she would not be so "easily frustrated". She found some related workshops to attend. I would spend some time outside of our mentoring in exploring WebCT with the help of online tutorial.

The next several mentoring meeting went on smoothly. We began to accomplish simple tasks, such as uploading files, adding icons, and changing page layouts. Sometimes, I showed her how to do a certain kind of thing. Sometimes, Dr. Miller showed me how to do things. It is an enjoyable experience of sharing. We are like partners, holding hands together to work on WebCT. Gradually, our anxiety and stress level towards new WebCT waned.

Design and develop online learning environment on WebCT 3.0

Though we were far from being proficienct on new WebCT, we decided to start our project of constructing CI 468 on new Webct. I have learned some instructional design courses and have designed some online lesson units for class projects. But, I had not built any course site on WebCT 3.0 and the course content of CI 468 was new for me. Dr. Miller led our discussion with the introduction of the course goals and objectives, content, outline, delivery, and assessment. Thus, I had a good understanding in her course. Then, we brainstormed ideas to integrate technology features into her course design such as using short video clips and starting discussion forum for students to reflect their readings.

One dilemma Dr. Miller was faced with was her temptation to put everything online. She tended to simply convert the whole course pack material onto a web version and put it onto WebCT. She showed me the course pack and started to consult me how she could scan each page and put them onto WebCT. I understood that was a common problem of faculty to design online courses. They don't have enough knowledge and experience to best use the strength of different media like web. I worried about her approach to designing an online environment because I know it wouldn't work at all! However, I was not sure how I could persuade her not to do so. I brought up this issue to our CI 610 for discussion. It was wonderful to have a community to talk about problems, generate ideas, and share resources! Both classmates and instructor helped me analyze my problem and provided suggestions. Then, the following mentoring meeting I followed advice from C I 610 and asked Dr. Miller to visuMillerze what might happen if everything was online. We started a list of "what if" from the perspectives of her students. It took a little while to make Dr. Miller to reMillerze that putting everything online would only produce an "electronic page turner". I was glad to see that she came to the point to reMillerze the technology is to enrich and enhance her instruction instead of simply alternative delivery method. Then she identified which part of course material should be online, which part should not, and how each medium like prints and web could supplement each other. She began to think how she could use visuals, graphics, multimedia components on WebCT and how she can utilize Discussions, Chat, and Mails to supplement her course teaching. It is a tough process for her to think differently how she would teach with WebCT from lecturing in face-to-face classroom. Though she is enthusiastic about the change of technology integration, she is struggling to learn strength of web and adjust herself to online learning environment.

In order to get Dr. Miller familiar with online learning environment, I shared other faculty members Webct site with her. Sharing with Dr. Miller about how other faculty members were doing also proved very effective. Those web sites are the live models for her to see how her colleagues are teaching in an online environment. We discussed online instructional activities. She quickly saw that she could use a similar Internet activity for her students in the discussion bulletin board. She became interested in designing more class activities onto WebCT.

Then we started a rough storyboarding on paper. I explained to Dr. Miller why we needed a storyboarding and how we would do a storyboarding. We used program of Inspiration and designed storyboarding. The process of storyboarding helped both Dr. Miller and I cleared up our ideas about navigation and got a sense of the web site layout. During later mentoring meetings, Dr. Miller always put the storyboarding beside and referred to it from time to time.

The final step was to produce what we had designed on paper onto new Webct. It was a challenging task. Dr. Miller controlled the mouse to do the work. Sometimes, she got stuck and I waited for her to try first. Then, I probed her with questions to help her to recall the right procedures. Often, we got caught up and didn't know what to do. We had to seek help from technical support person from Instructional Technology Center and the Center of Technology in Teaching and Learning. We sent emails or made calls to technical support personnel. We together sat down and tried to find appropriate terms to communicate with technical people.

At the end of semester, Dr. Miller got a good start on her project of building her course on new Webct. The basic structure of the WebCT site has been built. We created Discussions, Mail, and Content Modules on the site. Dr. Miller also got familiar with uploading and downloading files by herself. She became independent a little by little to perform simple tasks on WebCT. I was sitting there, watching her converting files into html, uploading files to WebCT, and adding files to the site. For the last mentoring session, because of a scheduled finals week, I couldn't meet her. She said that she would work on WebCT by herself and let me know if any problems she had. I thought it was a good time for her to overcome her anxiety of using WebCT. I told her to email me if she needed me. The next day, I got her email. She said that she was thrilled that she made it!

Conclusion
Similar to the experiences of Hseuh-hua Chuang in Chapter 4, my mentoring is a reciprocal relationship. I found that it is hard for me to say whether my professor or myself learned more. The nature of this kind of mutual benefit really made my mentoring experience dynamic and rewarding.
Dr. Miller was satisfied with her mentoring experience and kept keen in technology integration. She was happy to found out the potential to use Webct to facilitate her teaching. At the same time, she was pushed to recognize how she would adjust her instructional style and even pedagogy to make best use of online teaching environment.
As for myself, I benefited much from the mentoring experience. I was glad that I learned WebCT 3.0 and how to design an online learning environment on WebCT. With Dr. Miller, I refreshed different ideas of technology integration into teaching and further explored and evaluated the application of WebCT in her specific subject content teaching. The involvement in the course design process enabled me to understand the obstacles for faculty in technology integration.
Besides, the mentoring made me exercise ability to communicate with technical people. During the mentoring, I acted as a role of technology coordinator for Dr. Miller, connecting Dr. Miller with technology core group of the Department and the university. I was forced to learn and speak in many technical terms and explain technical details back and forth with technical support. I still remember, when I asked for help for the first time, I was uncertain, hesitating to ask in right terms. Now I was impressed how proficiently I can communicate my ideas with technical person in accurate terms and made myself understood!
Finally, as an international student, the mentoring was an excellent opportunity for me to understand teaching and learning culture of American universities. By working closely with a faculty, I saw how an American faculty organized her teaching, designed her class activity, evaluated student learning, and what they believed in teaching and learning. I felt my mentoring was a very rewarding experience and I would love to mentor more!

Reference
Cuban, L. (1998). High-tech schools and low-tech teaching. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education. 14 (2).
Ely, J.(1995, April 14). Technology is the answer: But what was the question? The James P. Curtis Distinguished Lecture Series, Capstone College of Education Society, University of Alabama.
Fulton, K. (1989). Technology training for teachers: A federal perspective. Educational Technology, 29 (3), 12-17.
Handler, M. & Marshall, D. (1992). Preparing new teachers to use technology: One set of perceptions. Technology and Teacher Education Annual 1992, 386-388. Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
McArthur,C. (1993). Computer mentoring: A case book [and] computer mentoring course guide. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 361 187)

Schmidt, D. (1995). Use and integration of computer-related technology in teaching by preservice teacher education faculty. Unpublished dissertation: Iowa State University.

Smith, S. J. and O'Bannon, B. (1999). Faculty members infusing technology across teacher education: A mentorship model. Teacher Education and Special Education, 22 (2), 123-135.

Thompson, A. & Schmidt, D., & Hadjiyianni, E. (1995). A three year program to infuse technology throughout a teacher education program. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 3(1), 13-24.